“Rotten luck,” Pennington said, not quite masking his discomfort over talking to the man he had been cuckolding for three months.

D’Amato nodded. “Life in Starfleet, I guess.” He tilted his head in the direction of the departed starship. “Who do you know on the Bombay?”

“No one.” It was a clumsy, amateurish lie. He realized only after he’d uttered it that he could name at least half a dozen casual acquaintances on the Miranda-class vessel. “No one special, anyway,” he amended.

“Oh.” Robert shrugged. “I just figured because you were watching her ship out—”

“I watch all the Starfleet ships come and go. Kinda goes with the job.”

Only now did D’Amato seem to take notice of the laminated FNS credentials strung on a lanyard around Pennington’s neck. His tone instantly became one of suspicion. “Journalist, huh?”

“I prefer to think of myself as an investigative reporter.”

“What scoop are you hoping for here?”

“You never know.”

“Get anything good lately?”

It took all of Pennington’s willpower not to blurt out, Your wife. “Actually, I just did a story about a pair of suspicious deaths on the Enterprise.”

D’Amato’s suspicion turned into outright hostility. “Oh, really? And what would you know about it? I didn’t see you there.” He advanced toward Pennington, who backed up a few steps. “Do you like making up sleaze about good people who died in the line of duty?”

He stopped and let D’Amato come nose-to-nose with him. “Listen up.” Pennington poked his index finger into the Starfleet officer’s chest. “Don’t call my work sleaze. I’m not some hack working for a gossip sheet, I’m a reporter for FNS. I’m a pro. Try reading my story before you bash it.”

Tension lingered hot and thick for several moments while the two men stared each other down. D’Amato backed off but kept a cautious eye on Pennington. “Your story better check out,” he said. “Or else.”

Nothing that Pennington could think to say would sound less than provocative, so he kept quiet and watched D’Amato walk away. Glancing out into the main spacedock, Pennington noted that the Bay Two doors were once again closed. He thought of Oriana, then about her husband. Confronting him had not been part of Pennington’s agenda, and letting the guy have the last word had been particularly galling.

Consolation would come soon enough, Pennington knew: When he’s on his way back to Earth, he gloated, and Oriana’s back here with me.

Dr. Mark Piper had expected to find a large, well-supplied infirmary on a station as large as Vanguard. His expectations had been far exceeded when he followed the station map to the medical center to find an entire hospital, still sparkling new and as antiseptic-smelling as a freshly sanitized scalpel. Nestled deep within the station, the heavily shielded complex occupied levels twenty-one through twenty-five, near the core.

The range of its facilities impressed Piper. Vanguard Hospital included a fully staffed emergency room; an infectious-disease ward with an isolation wing; intensive-care units; dozens of specialty units such as pediatrics, obstetrics, physical therapy, and biosynthetics; suites of surgical theaters; a trio of operating rooms that could be reconfigured for various xenophysiologies; eight medical laboratories; a pharmacy; and even a separate dentistry office.

By the time Piper had finished wandering through the multilevel maze of the hospital’s many wards and labs and arrived in the waiting room outside CMO Fisher’s office, he was, as his father would have said, “plum tuckered out.” Eager to finish his business, he headed for the fanciest-looking door in the room.

From an adjacent office, a young human man wearing a short-sleeved blue physician’s tunic called out to Piper before he could knock on Fisher’s door. “I’m sorry, sir, Dr. Fisher has left for the day.”

“Serves me right for going sight-seeing,” Piper said. “I wanted to see what medical miracles had been invented since I last made port. Should’ve figured he wouldn’t wait up for me.”

The young doctor had risen from his desk and joined Piper in the waiting room. “Dr. Fisher waits for no man.” He offered his hand to Piper. “Jabilo M’Benga.”

He shook M’Benga’s hand. “Mark Piper, Enterprise. Pleased to meet you.” Jerking a thumb toward Fisher’s office, he added, “Your boss told me he could resupply my sickbay.”

“Did he have you submit a requisition?”

“On paper. In triplicate.”

M’Benga chortled. “That sounds like Dr. Fisher, all right.” He guided Piper to follow him out the door. “If it was approved, it’ll be on file in the pharmacy. You’ll just need to come down and sign some forms…. In triplicate.”

“Great,” Piper said, walking beside M’Benga into the corridor. “Nothing screams efficiency like red tape.”

“New regulations,” M’Benga said. “I agree with you, they can be ridiculous. But what can we do? It’s this or private practice.” He stopped in front of a pair of turbolift doors and pressed the call button.

“Funny you should mention that,” Piper said. “That’s exactly what I’m doing when I get back to Earth.”

Curiosity animated M’Benga’s boyish features. “Really? You’re not happy aboard the Enterprise?”

“My retirement has nothing to do with the Enterprise,” Piper said. “If you ask me, she’s one of the best damned ships in the fleet, and her captain is first-rate.”

The turbolift doors opened, and the two physicians stepped inside next to a pair of nurses. M’Benga gave the throttle a twist as the doors closed. “Level twenty-four, pharmacy.” The turbolift thrummed as it began its swift, smooth descent.

“So, if it’s not the ship or her captain…?”

“I’m just getting old,” Piper said. “I’ve been in uniform a long time, and I’ve seen a good chunk of today’s Federation take shape…. I’d like to spend what time I have left thinking about the shape of my own life.”

M’Benga nodded. “Yes, I can see how you might feel that way. I imagine one gets a very different perspective on life serving aboard a starship.”

“A more claustrophobic one, that’s for sure.”

As the turbolift shifted to horizontal movement, M’Benga asked, “Do you know yet who’ll be taking your place on the Enterprise?”

Piper nodded. “A surgeon named McCoy. We already have orders to pick him up at Earth.” The turbolift stopped, and Piper followed M’Benga out into the corridor. “As I understand it,” Piper continued, “we’ll also be replacing a few nurses and a full shift of lab technicians.” Keeping an eye on M’Benga’s reaction, he added, “I’ve also heard that Starfleet is planning on adding a few more staff physicians to the Enterprise next year.” Just as Piper had suspected, M’Benga’s attention intensified at the news. “If you like, I could put in a good word for you before I leave.”

M’Benga stopped outside the door to the pharmacy. “That’s very kind of you, Dr. Piper, but I’m not sure the Enterprise would have much need of a doctor who served his internship in a Vulcan medical ward.”

The old surgeon couldn’t help but laugh. Shaking his head at M’Benga, he clapped his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You haven’t met our first officer, have you?”

Kirk sat alone in his quarters and read the top news story on FNS. Every sentence and each new paragraph further stoked his primal desire to track down reporter Tim Pennington and pummel him, bare-handed, straight into a new career.

Pennington’s feature story was by now distributed across all of known space, available to billions of people, and all but certain to cause Kirk no end of trouble. It wasn’t the errors in the story that concerned him; those were few and relatively inconsequential. In every truly important sense, the story was factual and accurate. To Kirk’s chagrin, he also had to admit that it was basically fair.